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60 International Journal of Cultural Studies 19(1)

the early Birmingham University Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS)

project under Stuart Halls leadership identified the following semiological/semiotic

sources also: Roland Barthes, Jonathan Culler and V.I. Volosinov, among others.

The interpretant, implied in Halls model, is key to understanding how interpreters

make sense of, and respond to, signs, in relation to the discursive contexts from whichthey are generated. Eco had connected the dots thus: a system of signs is not only a

system of sign vehicles, but also a system of meanings (1972: 103). Despite the much

earlier Peirceian semiotic, and the later reformulation by Eco, the explicit semiotic con-

nections remain largely muted in cultural studies literatures. The model was a recurring

point of reference at the CCCS501conference held in Birmingham in June 2014. This

event celebrated the establishment of the archive, an intervention that Richard Johnson

described as a re-occupation of Birmingham University (that so precipitously closed

the Centre in 2002; see Webster, 2004).

Where Peirce emphasized the ways in which signs work, Hall and subsequent mediareception scholars developed ways of understanding how communities of interpreters

(what Peirce called sign-communities) make sense of media messages (e.g. Morley,

1992). Halls model actively animated what Peirce explicitly and in much more detail

called the second trichotomy of signs in the act of reception/decoding, rather than focus-

ing just on encoding on the one hand or decoding on the other.

Where the Hall model admits a variety of interpretants, 1950s mass society theories,

conventional structural-functionalist sociology and communication science that held

sway during the Cold War and apartheid era, could not account for interpretations that

contested or negotiated the dominant ideology. The transmission understanding of com-munication is widely criticized for its concentration on the level of message exchange to

the exclusion of context or an understanding of the complex relationship between the

encoding and decoding ends of the communication chain (Hall, 1980: 57). Mechanistic

stimulusresponse applications of the Shannon and Weaver (1949) model, together with

administrative research, formed the basis of South African communication science during

the 1980s. Opposing sign-communities were considered aberrant, if not deviant, threaten-

ing, and the state feared their potential for political mobilization. For the purposes of this

paper, the term CommunicationMediumResponse (CMR) will be used instead of

transmission as it more actively encodes the stimulusresponse mechanism assumed bycommunication science, which itself largely draws on organizational psychology.

Peirces second trichotomy fractured the co-terminous dyadic de Saussurian structur-

alist semiology by deliberately locating the viewer/spectator/interpreter/decoder as the

meaning-making organism, in a triadic rather than a dyadic (structuralist, semiological)

relationship. That is to say, semiotics as triadic includes an active interpreterwithin the

signsignifier relationship. If cultural studies examines (i) culture as structure and (ii)

culture as a response to structure,2then the encoding/decoding model was a natural early

development addressing these interlinked relationships. A mixture of semiotics and

semiology, first popularized by John Fiske and John Hartley (1978), opened the door to

the study of textcontextinterpreter relations. Peirces overarching frame or supersign

of the phaneron (in contrast to Kants more restricted notion of the phenomenon) offers

a sophisticated framework via which to approach both how meaning is made and also

interpreted, and moreover, offers a means of explaining stark differences in the ways in

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Tomaselli 61

which different sign-communities (interpreters) make different sense of the same mes-

sages. The phaneron encodes all and anything that is present to the mind in the act of

interpretation, including fictions, the imaginary and the supernatural regardless of

whether it corresponds to any real thing or not (Peirce, 193158: vol. 1, 284). Table 1

schematizes a tabulation of sign relations.The example through which a phaneroscopic framing of the encoding/decoding model

will be illustrated involves a Supreme Court case brought against the Minister of Defence

by the End Conscription Campaign (ECC) in 1988 requiring him to cease a disinforma-

tion campaign being conducted against it by the South African Defence Force (SADF).

The ministers expert witness had proposed a stimulusresponse argument that anyone

reading an ECC poster would be automaticallypersuaded to adopt a revolutionary pos-

ture. Encoding/decoding was not then part of communication sciences conceptual rep-

ertoire. The Court, however, did understand that encoding and decoding codes sometimes

collide.

Encoding/decoding

Three different ways in which readers respond to texts were proposed by Hall, which

appear to have been triggered by Ecos (1972) intervention: the first (and the only posi-

tion of which communication science was aware) is one of transparent decoding where

the reader interprets the message in terms of the reference code in which it was encoded

(i.e. the intentions of the writer) (Hall, 1981: 136). The second position, characterized by

Hall (1981: 137) as negotiated, occurs when readers acknowledge the legitimacy of thereference code in which the message has been encoded, but reserve the right to negotiate

their own ideological positions. Eco talks of aberrant decoding as the unexpected

exception, if not the rule (1972: 105). The message maker is not always aware of such

aberrant possibilities. The third is when the reader understands both the literal and con-

notative inflection given by a discourse but decodes the message in a globally different

way (Hall, 1981: 137). This is no longer aberrant but oppositional decoding. Within the

three positions outlined by Hall reside interpretants where discursive struggle occurs,

elaborated in the next section.

Outline and division of interpretants: the cultural

connection

Every sign is an interpretant. Every interpretant is related to its object through the sign it

interprets or decodes. The three kinds of interpretants are: (i) the immediate, (ii) the

dynamical and (iii) the final. The immediate interpretant resides in a signs own peculiar

interpretability before it gets to any interpreter (Peirce, 1953: 36). The immediate is the

logical potential or possibility of a sign to be interpreted. It is a feeling, an undigested

central idea that exists in and of itself, located in firstness.

The dynamical interpretant is the direct effect actually produced by a sign upon an

interpreter of it (CP 4.536).4This interpretant is divided according to the different

kinds of responses within the interpreter/decoder or reader of which Peirce identifies

three: (i) the emotional, (ii) the energetic, and (iii) the logical. The emotional is the



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Table1.Th

ephaneroscopictable.ThePe

irceiantrichotomy,relatingsig

nstodiscourse,philosophyan

dthephenomenologyoftheh

uman

condition.Th

etableistobereadintermsofthemultipledimensionsofsignificanceandsensibilityinthewaysitispossibletoexperie

ncethe

presentation

andre-presentationofthewo

rld(asdefinedthroughHannahArendt,1958).

Ordersof

signification

Peircesorderof

philosophy

Phanero

scopy

(Peircescategories)

Thethreetriads

ofsignsandtheir

relations3

Natureofsemiotic

interaction

Orderofdiscourse

Phenom

enology

1

Aesthetics

Descriptionof

qualityorfeeling:

theemotional

interpretant

Firstne

ss

Centralideaquality

(1868)

Immediate

interpre

tant(a

feeling)

Functional

Icon(motivate

d

sign)

Signproper:

Qualisign

Operation:Rhem

e

Encounter

Signifyingorganisms

initialface-to-face

receptionofsignificant

potentiality

Polemical

Theevokingof

emotionalsigns:

racism,nationalism,

infatuation,etc.

Being-there

Strangenessatfacing

thenew

:thebasic

incarnatecondition

2

Ethics

Analysisofnormsin

doing:theenergetic

interpretant

Second

ness

Identity

intheface

oftheO

ther

Dynamical

interpre

tant

Reaction(1868)

FunctionalIndex

Denotation

Connotations

Mythwhichble

eds

intothethirdorder

below

Experience

Recognitionor

responsetosignificance:

knowinghowto

conductoneselfina

situation

Rhetorical

Aimedatconduct

orbehaviour:

persuadingtoactthis

wayinsteadofthat

way

Activit

y/doing

Workd

irectedat

makingtheworld:

producingfamiliar

materialgoods

3

Science/logic

Activityof

elaboratingrelations:

thefinalorlogical

interpretant

Thirdn

ess

Codes/s

yntagma

Modeofrelations

Logicalinterpretant

Mediation(1868)

Functional

Symbol

Signproper:Legisign

Operation:

Argument

Intelligibility

Makingsenseinregular

ways:transmitting

knowledgeabout

relationshipsbetween

encounterand

experience

Reflexive

Elaboratingthought

onrelationsbetween

emotionalandactive

discourse:producing

newresponsesor

conduct

Public

signs

Producingthenew

aspartoftheworld:

changingtheworld

withnewways

ofdoing(habits,

conduct)

Source:DerivedfromTomaselliandShepperson

(2001:93).

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Tomaselli 63

feeling in the interpreter invoked by the sign. It may be one of recognition or it might

be elevated to a higher level which is itself the only proper significate effect that the

sign produces (5.475). The energetic interpretant is that which involves an effort

either physical or mental; this sign resides in secondness. The logical interpretant

resides in the category of thirdness/ideology. The ultimate logical interpretant is neces-sary to break the cycle of interpretants producing signs. Unlimited semiosis encoding/

decoding/new coding occurs until this point. The logical interpretant is divisible into

the non-ultimate and the ultimate. The latter will act as an explanation which must be in

terms of something other than what is to be explained. The only instance of ultimate

logical interpretants, which would need to have a general application, is that of a habit-

change meaning a modification of a persons tendencies towards action, resulting

from previous experiences or from previous exertions of his will or acts, or from a

complexus of both kinds of causes (5.476).

Since only intellectual concepts have logical interpretants, the future tense of theinterpretant is in the conditional would-be category (5.482). The ultimate logical inter-

pretant is similar to Halls notion of ideological closure, where messages are designed

to limit interpretant production. This implies action (political or otherwise). The natural

termination of a sign (semiotic closure) occurs when it serves a particular purpose or a

vested interest. Peirces habit is similar to Antonio Gramscis (1971) common sense,

the taken-for-granted way of doing things which involves no change of social practice (in

Althussers [1971] sense) or perception of alternatives. Habit (or common sense) can be

identified with the ultimate logical interpretant. Some signs capable of producing an

ultimate logical interpretant do not do so because the interpreter resists carrying thesemiotic process sufficiently far to establish or change a habit.

Habits are general and thirds, social practices they incline individuals to act or react

in prescribed ways under certain conditions. While Peirce conducted his discussion of

logical interpretants in the context of scientific inquiry, my argument is that Peirces

theory of interpretants can be extended to apply to everyday practices where individuals

are arguing, thinking, reacting and acting. Habits, being thirds, are the normative rules

within which individuals, groups, classes and class fractions behave, think and to which

they respond. Practices are reacted to in terms of something other than what is to be

explained (Fitzgerald, 1966: 153); that is, the CMR framework obscures understand-ing of particular concepts and forecloses unlimited semiosis to within the limits set by

the mode of relations ideology that is the habit. Habits are not signs because the effect

produced by the habit is an action, though it may be triadically produced. Signs make

connection with the material world at the level of thirdness. In other words, reality itself

is a set of relations where everything has a semiotic value.

The final interpretant is that which would finally be decided to be the true interpre-

tant if consideration of the matter were carried so far that an ultimate opinion were

reached (8.184). This involves the interpretation of the sign that would be negotiated by

the community of scientists if they understood completely the laws that regulate the

effects of the sign.

The immediate interpretant is the concept of the sign itself and so is an analogue of

firstness where the possibilities of interpretation are still open. The central idea has yet

to take on specificity, identity in the face of the other. The dynamical interpretant is the



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effect produced on the interpreter. It is the triadic nature of the dynamical interpretant

that allows Peirce to equate it with the sign itself. This makes the dynamical interpretant

an analogue of secondness. The final interpretant is that which would be if one under-

stood the laws of connection which structure the posited phaneron or sign.

Of the three interpretants, the immediate, the dynamical and the final, only the dynam-ical is an interpretant in the narrow sense, since Peirce defines the interpretant as the

effect that the sign has on the interpreter, and it is only the dynamical that completes this

triadic process. The immediate interpretant is not an interpretant in the narrow sense,

since it only establishes the interpretability of a sign. The final interpretant is also only a

quasi-interpretant since it is an ideal.

The model tested: communication or propaganda

Few conventional studies of communication admit that lies and lying, double-talk,deception, psychological warfare and the struggle for signs and meaning are part of com-

munication practices (see Eco, 1985). The concept conventionally assumes a benevolent

sharing of information. Benevolence is very rarely the case, however, as interpersonal,

inter-class and inter-cultural power relations always circumscribe the nature of the

interaction.

The trajectory of cultural studies that emerged in South Africa during the early 1980s

preceded awareness of the earlier Birmingham approaches. This trajectory largely arose

out of a Peirceian semiotic that linked resistance with workers theatre, performance stud-

ies and an explicit anti-apartheid media practice. A second trajectory, not at issue here,was an E.P. Thompson culturalism that dominated worker history, labour sociology and

workers theatre (see Tomaselli and Shepperson, 2001).

Initially generated by schools of journalism, media studies and performance, cultural

studies deriving from elements of the four liberal English-language universities found

itself in conflict with the implacably positivist, largely apartheid-supporting dominant

communication science paradigm that held sway at the majority of Afrikaans-language

universities. Where the former scholars directly contested the ruling hegemony the latter

neutrally located themselves within the administrative paradigm, and directly consulted

for the state, the military and other ideological and repressive state apparatuses (Tomaselliand Louw, 1993).

It was not surprising, then, in the encoding/decoding example below, that the adver-

saries in the court case reflected the broader communication science vs. media studies

conflict. Each paradigm was linked to different interpretive communities representative

of where they stood politically. The explicit use of the model as read via Peirce occurred

in a number of instances, of which the illustration below is but one.

Militarization of the sign

Militarization was central to the apartheid states total strategy/WHAM (Win Hearts

and Minds) theory following the June 1976 Soweto uprising that signalled the beginning

of the end of apartheid 18 years later. The dove-like WHAM shifted to the hawkish

COIN-OPS (Counter Insurgency Operations) under successive states of emergency



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Tomaselli 65

following 1986, which necessitated greater military intervention as a mechanism of rule.

As the example below attests, however, SADF leverage did not totally encompass the

judiciary.

A war-psychosis among whites was generated by the states propaganda agencies,

while trying to pacify blacks (Evans, 1983; Seegers, 1988). Following the State ofEmergency inaugurated in 1986, the media were directly manipulated by the Bureau of

Information (Tomaselli and Tomaselli 1986), and all verbal, pictorial and written criti-

cism of state action on containing the continuing unrest was declared subversive

(Republic of South Africa, 1986). Definitions of subversive fluctuated as unions and

media institutions challenged, sometimes successfully, the regulations through the

courts. The states response was to redraft the regulations. Increasingly under attack both

internally and externally, the ruling alliance amplified pressure on the anti-apartheid

press and any organization using media to oppose the war being fought on South Africas

borders against the allies of the banned and exiled African National and Pan-AfricanCongresses respective military arms.

The discourse of total war one that is economic, financial, political, psychological,

scientific in addition to being a war of armed forces eliminates the distinction between

civilian and military categories. As Armand Mattelart (1979: 406) states:

All of society has become a battlefield and every individual is in the camp of the combatants,

either for or against. It is a total war because the battlefields and the arms used pertain to all

levels of individual and community life, and because this war does not allow the very slightest

space to escape from the gravitational pull of the conflict.

The ECC was seen as a key player in anti-war internal resistance. Many thousands of

young white men had fled South Africa to escape conscription. The few conscientious

objectors who remained in the country were getting sustained and sometimes positive

media coverage in the liberal press, while many who did serve were conscripted against

their wills. The ECC was very active on university campuses and it had the backing of

lawyers, social justice and religious organizations, and ran an extensive and systematic

alternative media campaign.

During the last decade of apartheid the SADF and pro-apartheid media demonized the

ECC as enemy, linked to Moscow. Counter-measures against the campaign by the SADFCommunication Ops Division between 1986 and 1987 involved both violence and prop-

aganda tactics such as (i) circulating false documentation containing illegal content

sourced to ECC while (ii) rumours were spread by agents provocateursboth inside and

outside anti-apartheid organizations, aimed at creating moral panics and tarring ECC

members as folk devils; (iii) the use of demonic imagery, especially against internation-

ally known activists like Archbishop Desmond Tutu; and (iv) expert academic wit-

nesses were called on by courts of law to prove that the ECC was part of the total

onslaught being waged against the free world by communism.

The ECC had previously taken the Minister of Defence to court in late 1987 where hewas instructed to cease the anti-ECC dirty tricks. When the minister failed to comply the

ECC obtained a second injunction against him in August 1988. It is the latter case that is

of interest as the relationship of representation with regard to reception is the issue here.



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The Court decides: defeating the transmission model

The SADF relied in part on an MA thesis written by a student at Rand Afrikaans

University for its defence. Content from this thesis had appeared in right-wing maga-

zines, and the SADF had obtained from her a summary of the thesis in affidavit form(Pepler, n.d.). The ECCs lawyers had contacted me as they had no answer to the minis-

ters witness, whose testimony was that anti-conscription posters a priori encouraged

revolution on the part of readers. That is to say, the hegemony of the CMR model was

so pervasive that even the ECC legal team had no counter-argument initially.

Our team (that included graduate students at the Centre for Communication, Media

and Society [CCMS], University of Natal) responded to the Supreme Court affidavit by

applying the encoding/decoding model to this legal setting. An analysis of militarization,

hegemony and the social construction of the enemy underpinned a semiotic analysis of

anti- and pro-war publications (Graaf, 1988). This study provided the backdrop to a dra-matic court victory by the ECC. We had counter-argued that the state witnesss MA thesis

had interwoven fiction and non-fiction, and that it had legitimized the resulting propa-

ganda via an impression of scientific method, and through its reliance on the discredited

CMR model. By critically interrogating the thesis and method we generated from it a

theory of disinformation that was used by the ECC legal team against the minister (see

Louw and Tomaselli, 1991). An application of Peirceian semiotics as animated by Halls

(1980) model demonstrated that it was the thesis and not agitprop posters that were at

fault; that is, that the state witnesss final interpretant had been reached via the impression

of a scientific practice conducted in terms of something other than what is to be explained

(Fitzgerald, 1966: 153). The result was the SADFs cessation of the dirty tricks, simulta-

neously followed by the expected banning of the campaign. Our semiotic analysis, in fact,

revealed that many ECC posters were actually so confused as to be meaningless.

In terms of the encoding/decoding model: the first interpretant position occurs when

viewers interpret the encoders intentions without being made aware that the message is

a construct created within the codes and rules of meaning structuring.At work in the

ECC example were three totally different receptions assumed by the minister and his

expert witness.

First was the fiction (myth, secondness) that had no correspondence whatsoever to

empirical evidence or how readers of posters interpret them. The states witness transpar-ently assumed that her interpretation would be everybodys interpretation, but that the ener-

getic interpretants of those mechanistically persuaded by the poster to engage in revolt

would, ironically, not include her own response. This non-reflexive (or ultimate logical)

interpretant made sense in terms of the dominant ruling classes (thirdness). Even exposure

encounters with ECC documents and personnel failed to enable a change in her habit.

Second, the legal firm was totally flummoxed as it too initially assumed the CMR

model, while third, the CCMS expert witnesses immediately saw the contradictions in the

thesis and witness statement when read through both Peirceian semiotics and the encoding/

decoding model. The witness, her supervisor and examiners had endorsed her fictionalexplanation (other than what was to be explained) of the ECCs supposed organizational

chart and the presumed link to Moscow. The presumed Moscow link was the hidden tran-

script that was assumed in the thesis to be nevertheless present, if interpreted as a wilful



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Tomaselli 67

structured absence (myth, ideology, intelligibility). Experience (knowing how to conduct

oneself, secondness), resulted in the witness insisting that what was absent from the evi-

dence was in fact present in the way that ECC actually operated. The ECC organogram

similarly assumed by the witness presumed a hierarchical organization that did not exist

because her transmission model insisted on it. The ECC rank and file were expected by thestates witness by means of stimulusresponse to respond actively to instructions from the

fictional hierarchy which itself was acting on behalf of the Soviet Union. Despite access to

ECC personnel and documents, habit-change on the part of the witness did not occur and

the prevailing hegemonic common sense did not need factual verification as the link was

already known (myth, predisposition to preferred conduct) by the state and possibly her

supervisor, who in that year took up a position with the SADF.

The second position occurs when the code is negotiated. Once the ECCs legal firm

had been informed of negotiated and rejected decodings, it was able to develop a strategy

to defeat the ministers CMR argument. The expert witnesss method and transmissionassumptions had excluded the need to conduct semiotic or reception analysis of the ECC

posters which might have identified incoherent signification, let alone aberrant readings.

What was already known by the witness and the minister took on the force of discursive

law (final interpretant, argument, no habit-change), as disinformation repeats assertions

until they become self-evident truths (myth, secondness). Thus, in this discourse, as

articulated in the pro-apartheid public sphere, boo words predominate and ECC mem-

bers were demonized as homosexuals, commies and cowards. The ECC legal team had

to navigate these common sense truths or myths. Habit-change occurred as far as the

ECC legal team was concerned and a new final interpretant was negotiated, centred onreception analysis and the encoding/decoding model.

The third response is when the interpreter understands both the literal and connota-

tive inflections given a message but decodes it in a totally different way.This was our

position as we studied both the MA thesis and expert affidavit derived from it. The right-

wing media legitimized its anti-ECC allegations by citing the experts (whose word, by

definition, is uncontestable) quoted by ministers witness. Yet our team concluded in

every instance that these sources (ranging from Marshall McLuhan to Mao Tse Tung had

been misinterpreted (i.e. decoded in totally different ways). This reading was thus neu-

tralized by involving me (acting on behalf of my team) as a counter-expert. Since wewere able to trace sources from the banned works of Lenin to the Bible we could show

in many cases that they had been quoted out of context.,

A fourth category, not mentioned by Hall, is that of confusion, not to be confused with

aberrant decoding. One of our arguments was that some ECC posters were semiotically

incomprehensible, no matter what the ideological position of the reader. The judge

agreed, especially when the SADFs council himself was unable to interpret one particu-

lar poster.

The final interpretant: conclusionPeirce developed his semiotic to address the scientific that which would be the final

interpretant when consensus is reached the kinds of interpretations that arise from

research practice. Where the first case brought against the minister in 1987 focused on



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the illegality of the dirty tricks campaign, the second was an argument over representa-

tion and its significatory effects.

Phaneroscopy anchors Peirces ensuing analysis of indirect knowledge of reality,

that is, encounters within which people make sense of their worlds. Encounters entail

several possible experiences between an interpreter and an event or situation. The stateswitness had one particular intelligibility shaped by her own ethnic, language, class and

racial determinations. In contrast, our Centres multi-racial anti-apartheid activist team

involved a different interaction with regard to encounter, experience and intelligibility. If

the phaneron pre-exists the sign, signs, then, are the vehicles through which experience

becomes intelligible. The kind of intelligibility that results will differ between ideologi-

cal positions as was experienced by the Court.

The phaneron involves the interpretations of bothproducers(conceived texts, encod-

ing) and viewers(perceived texts, interpretants) in a total framework of meaning (social

and public texts [apartheid, anti-apartheid]) which may have little to do with the realitythat the ministers expert witness encountered, experienced or was responding to.

Our drawing of a link between the Hall model and Peirces semiotic was a tactical

one. Apart from the fact that we were simultaneously drawing on both phenomenological

Peirceian semiotics and materialist cultural studies as analytical frameworks, we were

also engaged in an active practice of resistance. The states intellectual apparatuses them-

selves had dismissed Marxism as an affirmative theory, and thus dismissed cultural stud-

ies also, though it remained wary of both, especially Lenin and Gramsci, whose work

was seen to be of strategic organizational significance (unlike Marxs writings), and

therefore an affirmative threat to the prevailing political economic order (Tomaselli,2000). What Peirce, a non-Marxist, brought to the table was a clear method, one recog-

nized by the Court and our academic ideological opponents, and a set of semiotic tech-

niques that trumped the ministers own legal advisers.

The crucial impact of the model in the way we applied it to anti-apartheid activity in

South Africa, as described in the above example, has been significant. To this extent,

Halls work in general underpinned much of our theory and practice during the late apart-

heid years and was crucial in helping us to develop a resistance strategy and actual appli-

cations. Explicitly developing interrelated theories of militarization of the media to a

theory of disinformation by linking Halls model to Peirceian semiotics afforded theECC legal team a scientifically legitimate conceptual framework through which to argue

its case.

With regard to the source of the model, it is clear that in the heady days when CCCS

was attempting to chart its own path many of its academics and students, in surfing the

wider literature, had appropriated what worked for them in their quest to constitute them-

selves as organic intellectuals in addressing the rise of Thatcherism. Eco, Volosinov and

other semiotic and socio-linguistic scholars influenced the Centres debates, directly and

indirectly. The achievement of the Centre was as much due to the way that it organized

itself and its critical pedagogy as it was due to the intensive discussions though which

ideas were developed, circulated, appropriated, merged and applied, involving what C.S.

Peirce would identify as a community of scholars working on a common project. In its

travels, cultural studies has become the overarching enchanting idea (a phaneron of

sorts) in its near universalism within sections of the Humanities.



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Tomaselli 69

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or

not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

1. The CCCS was established in 1964.

2. Thanks to Paul Wallace, a postgraduate student supervised by Hall during 19756, for this

specific formulation. My thanks to Wallace for his extensive engagement of a previous draft

of this article.

3. The nature of Peirces sign relation requires that any sign can only be real (that is, have a

bearing on conduct) in relation toan Objectforan Interpretant. But to relate tois, in Peirces

diagrammatic mathematical sense, to map ontoin the sense of a function. Hence, the Icon-

Index-Symbol triad refers to the ways signs proper map ontotheir Objects.

4. Peirces Collected Paperswere published in eight volumes between 1931 and 1958. The con-vention cites by volume number, followed by paragraph number. A reference to Peirce, CP

7.138, therefore, indicates the source of our citation or material at paragraph 138 of volume 7

of the Collected Papers.

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Author biography

Keyan Tomaselliis editor of Critical Artsand co-editor ofJournal of African Cinemas.He is also

a distinguished professor at the University of Johannesburg. His recent edited books include

Cultural Icons, Cultural Tourism: Rethinking Indigeneity, Writing in the San/dandEncountering

Modernity.

Documents

Tomaselli (2016) Encoding-Decoding the Transmission Model